I grew up in a Chinese household in 1960s suburban Brisbane that resonated with my stepmother’s high-pitched Cantonese opera arias alongside pop music. Pop music rocked my boat from as early as I can remember. Mum even made me a matching midriff top and mini skirt from leftover curtain material, so I could  ‘go-go’ dance to Brian Henderson’s Bandstand on TV. At age seven, I was bedridden for three months and the only relief from the intense boredom was to try to jot down the lyrics from my favourite pop songs on the radio. Given they were on high rotation, it shouldn’t have been difficult, but a seven-year-old doesn’t always  “get” pop lyrics, and my older brothers would be in  hysterics reading my versions of Petula Clark’s Downtown  or The Animals’ Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood. 

My eldest brother scored a lucrative short-term job when I was about 11, and he returned cashed-up enough  to buy me a piano. One of the early pieces of sheet music I was given was Simon & Garfunkel’s The Sound...